Mirrors
by Irhaboggles
Summary: Mirrors have long been sources of power and mystery in the realm of fantasy. This is a fact Elphaba comes to learn personally as she travels through life, surrounded by all sorts of magical, mystical mirrors.


Elphaba found mirrors enigmatic. They were revealing and concealing at the same time, paradoxical as that idea was. But perhaps that was why they interested her so much. You could look into them and see the plain truth, yet you could also look into them and see a lie, a fake, a hidden object. It was so fascinating. And Elphaba's first experience with mirrors had come from a strange Quadling man named Turtle Heart. He was a glass-blower and had created a little toy for her to marvel at. She had been able to see her reflection in it, to some degree, but the funniest thing was, when she looked into the toy for the very first time, instead of seeing black hair and green skin, she'd seen white hair and white skin... But the instant little Elphaba blinked in surprise, the vision shifted. Now, instead of a girl, she saw a strange man entering Oz in a big, hot-air balloon. The scary part of the vision was the fact that whatever ground the man floated over ended up turning the same color as his balloon: blood red.

The second time Elphaba had encountered a strange mirror happened about five years later, when she was roughly 10 years old. It had happened while she was waiting for her father to finish up one of his many religious conferences. While he was inside the chapel, speaking to his fellow priests, preachers and pastors, Elphaba had been in the next room over. It was only her, a few chairs and hymnals, and that singular mirror. She had gone over to it and then looked inside out of sheer boredom. The moment she reached it, however, she became lightheaded and sagged against the glass. Then, the second her skin touched the mirror, she fell right through.

"Elphaba! Time to go!" Elphaba yelped in shock as she felt her father touch her neck. "Elphaba! What in Oz are you doing?" her father demanded when she whipped around to look at him with wild eyes.

"What do you mean?" she squeaked, panting hard. "I nearly died! How did you know where to find me!? How did you-?"

"Find you?" Frex interrupted. "Elphaba, you were leaning against the mirror. It looked like you had fallen asleep... somehow. Are you feeling alright?" he raked his eyes over his young daughter's body, demanding and wary.

"Ummm, yeah, I guess I just... dozed off," it was a pathetic answer, but because Elphaba really hadn't had a better answer than that, it was all she could think of to say. But she could've sworn that she'd fallen in! She could remember it all!

After sinking straight through the glass of the mirror, she'd found herself falling down a very long and narrow hole. Once she landed, a small white Rabbit had gone sprinting by, muttering about how he was late for a very important date. A large, golden pocket watch had dangled off of his little red coat. And that was just the tip of the ice berg. Elphaba had also met a mad man with a top hat and his Hare companion, who both had tried to give her an array of different types of tea. And then she'd met a large purple Cat who had the ability to turn invisible. And then there had been the madwoman who had demanded that her head be chopped off just because she'd accidently ruined the lady's red roses. Her father had touched her neck a millisecond before the executioner's heart-shaped axe could have.

Elphaba gave up on mirrors after that. She tried never to look too hard or too long into them, and this was for two reasons. One, she didn't want to fall into another mystical realm. Two, for someone like her, a green-skinned weirdo, looking into a mirror was cause for great scorn. She had to be careful her peers never caught her looking into mirrors, or they would never let her hear the end of it.

"Why do you look in the mirror?" one of her classmates demanded. "There's nothing worth seeing! Besides, you're probably hurting the mirror!"

"Yeah, you ugly, freaky, green bean!" another one of her classmates jeered. It didn't take long for the rest to follow suit. Elphaba learned a very hard lesson that day: mirrors were only for pretty people. She was not pretty, ergo, she shouldn't be looking into mirrors.

But even though Elphaba had sworn off mirrors, this was not a vow she kept. She managed to follow through for about eight years, then she took her first peek back into a mirror, and it was all thanks to a certain bubbly, blond college roommate of hers...

"Why Ms. Elphaba, look at you, you're beautiful!" the roommate declared, shoving a mirror into Elphaba's hand. Elphaba had been skeptical at first, scoffing at the very idea, but she acquiesced to Galinda's demands and looked into the mirror. It was funny, she didn't think she was beautiful, but she honestly didn't look half bad. She certainly looked nice with Galinda by her side...

"I have to go!" Elphaba cried quickly, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. She shoved the mirror back into Galinda's hands before running away. The next time Elphaba looked into a mirror, although the view was pretty, Elphaba was sure that she had never seen anything more ugly. For the past few years, the green girl had been on the run from the "wonderful" Wizard of Oz, having since realized what a monster he was, and she had actively taken up arms against him. She was, at the moment, on a secret mission into his castle, rooting through his things and trying to find some special talisman to bring back to the resistance, who was waiting for her return. During her little search through the Wizard's many, many dragon hoards, Elphaba found her next magic mirror. It was a beautiful one, large and tall and gilded with gold and a great deal of precious gemstones. What really made it impressive, though, was that, instead of showing her face, it showed her heart's truest and deepest desires.

She looked in and... she could see herself, but she was... beautiful! And normal-skinned! And in pretty, fashionable clothing, not an old black cloak. And all of her family and friends were there, happy and smiling. Melena was alive. Turtle Heart was alive. Nessa was able to walk. Frex was smiling proudly at her. Boq and Fiyero were there. Dr. Dillamond had his hoof on Elphaba's back. Glinda was holding her hand and kissing her cheek. And Elphaba herself had been crowned queen of Oz. The Wizard was but a vanishing dot in the background of the frame. He was being sent away, the rest of the country finally realizing what a monster he was.

Although it was a beautiful image, Elphaba had tried to smash the mirror at once, enraged by what she perceived as its intentional desire to taunt her with all the things she would never have. But the mirror was strong, and it physically would not break.

"Lies!" she spat at the mirror. "Wishing only wounds the heart! And this is nothing but a wish! There is no truth or reality to it at all!" but the mirror continued to stand there in the Wizard's dragon's hoard, unmoving, unmovable and unmoved.

Then, a couple more years later, Elphaba stumbled upon her next mirror, nestled in the bowels of her own castle in the west, Kiamo Ko. It appeared normal enough. She couldn't detect any magic in it. But when she looked in, she was still horrified by what she saw.

"I'm wicked," she whispered, subdued as she stared into the mirror's surface. It was an evil image. She could see a hunched and angry witch. Her outfit was torn and dirty. She had moldy green skin, covered in warts and wrinkles. Her brown hair was like sticks of straw, and those eyes that had once been like chocolate or fresh soil now looked like mud and muck. They shined not with love or excitement, but madness, anger and vengeance. Her lips were shriveled and curled, open in an angry scream to reveal pointy, yellowed teeth. She was raising a splintered broom to the sky as she shouted, nails long and jagged as they pointed damningly up. Was this real? Elphaba didn't know. She didn't think she wanted to know either.

But it was strange, the longer Elphaba stared at the graphic, gruesome and grotesque creature in the mirror, the angrier and angrier she personally became. Not at the image, but at all the people who helped make it. She stared deeper into the mirror and she began to see Oz in a new light. The Emerald City was a slum in disguise, war was raging all around them, there was no goodness left in the world at all. All of her old friends had become enemies. Even Glinda appeared to Elphaba as a corrupt and greedy fool who willingly subjugated herself for the sake of a few bones here and there. She was an idiot, a coward, a liar and a traitor. Fake and immoral. And of course, at the head of it all, was the tyrannical Wizard himself. Seeing him made Elphaba seethe with rage and, without even thinking, she broke the mirror. It was almost as if she was trying to kill the Wizard, but because he was only an image on a mirror, she only succeeded in shattering that mirror. Some of the shards shot out and struck Elphaba, but she didn't even notice. She didn't feel any pain at all. She could only continue to seethe, boiling in her own hatred. Without even meaning to, she had become the very image that she first saw when she looked into this strange, magic mirror.

"I'm WICKED!" she repeated then, and this time, she fully believed it. She tossed her head back in a dark and wild sort of triumph before darting back up to her little lair in the tallest tower of Kiamo Ko. She cackled as she reentered that tower, already making plans not just to bring the Wizard to his knees, but to conquer all of Oz for herself as well. She really was the Wicked Witch of the West now! Her last shred of sanity and her last vestiges of virtue had gone after she'd seen that image of herself as nothing more than a wretched old hag with a psychotic temper.

In the years to come, that madness and harshness only became clearer and clearer.

"Where is she?!" the Wicked Witch screeched to the mirror now hanging in her tower with her. This one was another magic mirror that she had found in one of the Wizard's hoards, only this one was far more obviously sentient than the previous one had been. This one could actually talk.

"She is headed west with three loyal friends, all set about to see you meet a bitter end," the mirror replied. Elphaba swore heartily.

"When will they arrive?" she demanded of her mirror companion.

"She will arrive at nightfall, standing proud and tall," came the rhythmic reply.

"Perfect!" the Witch gave a sick, twisted smile. "I can kill her and even she won't know what's hit her!"

"Be wary now, for although the future is dim, I can see that you will meet an ending most grim!" the mirror tried to warn its cruel mistress, but that moment he suggested that this little farm girl might actually be able to kill her, that was when she snapped.

"Oh! Shut up! You useless, annoying, rhyming, idiotic, creature!" she screeched. Then, without even thinking, she rammed her broom right into the center of the mirror, shattering it at once and silencing the voice inside of it forever.

"You are wrong!" she told the broken pieces of the mirror. "My death is NOT written in the fates, nor is it written in the stars, nor is it written in any stupid little prophecy! I am not going to die! I won't! I refuse! I have fought far too hard for far too long to be defeated now! Especially by an imbecilic little peasant! Just who does she think she is, anyway?!" the Witch continued to rant and rave.

She stepped right over the broken pieces of her companion, hardly aware of what she had just done to him. Instead, she peered outside her tower window, hoping that she might be able to catch a glance at her arriving assassins. The Witch already knew what they all looked like, but she wanted to see if she could at least see them coming. Sure enough, in the very distance, she could make out four dots moving closer towards her castle. Bingo. And because the Witch was still reeling from the mirror shards that had pierced her eyes and heart so long ago, when she saw that little farm girl up close, instead of seeing a sweet little girl, or an innocent child, all she saw was a snobby, whiny, snot-nosed little brat with her head not screwed on quite right. To the Witch, the girl was not kind or beautiful, but horribly spoiled, selfish, whiny and plain. Boring. Dull.

But despite that, the little girl brought something quite powerful and magical to Elphaba: her final mirror. It was a total accident, but it still happened. Elphaba had set one of the girl's friends alight and, in her panic, the farm girl had tossed a nearby bucket of water on him. The water also struck Elphaba and, immediately, she began to melt, dissolving into nothingness. And as she faded away from this life, she could see her reflection in the puddle that accumulated on the ground from that giant bucket of water. Within that watery mirror, again, she could see that white-haired, white-skinned girl. But once again, Elphaba only had the chance to blink one more time before the vision vanished. This time, for good.

ooo

A miserable, lonely little girl sat alone in her snow-covered room, hoping for a miracle to thaw the horrid ice she'd accidently created.

"Come on Elsa, you're a princess, be strong! Conceal, don't feel!" the girl urged herself, but it was of no use. It seemed that the more she tried to encourage herself not to, the faster her icy powers worked. Nearly her whole room was covered in a light coating of frost. The one thing that remained mostly untouched by ice or snow was her mirror. As her eyes moved despairingly around her room, they passed the mirror and, for a second, she thought she saw a flash of green within its reflective surface...

Years later, Elsa found herself pacing in her icy castle in a bitter rage. It seemed that no good deed went unpunished. For all her best efforts, her kingdom was slowly freezing to death, and it was all her fault. She paused to glare at her reflection, which seemed to stare at her from every angle of her highly-reflective castle. But in her anger and fear, the ice of her castle grew jagged, distorting her reflection. Suddenly, all she could see was a hunched-over figure, thirst in her eyes and ice at her palms, teeth bared in hatred and hunger. The jagged icicles made her look like a monster. But one reflection in particular stood out to her. It was the reflection of her on one incredibly cruel-looking icicle hanging down from an archway in her palace. That reflection had given her black hair and green skin, but the vision was gone as soon as it had come...

In time, against all odds, Elsa found herself standing proudly before her ever-forgiving kingdom as she turned her courtyard into a skating rink for them to enjoy. While skating, Elsa leaned happily against the fountain at the center of her courtyard and, in the frozen water, she thought she saw a green face smiling peacefully up at her from the glistening sheen. But before Elsa could even think, she felt as though a giant burden had been lifted off of her shoulders. Elsa couldn't suppress a laugh, that was how strong the sudden relief felt. The green face vanished as she began to laugh and she didn't even notice as a green snowflake began to float gently upward towards the sun, spiraling somewhere over the rainbow.

**AN: Just a huge fic about magic mirrors that all leads up to "Elphaba=Elsa". Also, this uses book and musical-canon both, but it's mainly book-canon.**

**Now, here's a list of all the mirrors I referenced: **

**The first happened in-book wherein Elphaba prophetically foresees the coming of the Wizard of Oz to Oz.**

**The next is the looking glass Alice reaches Wonderland through in the sequel to her original story.**

**The third is, of course, the mirror Glinda hands her during "Popular".**

**The fourth is the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter.**

**The fifth is the mirror from the Snow Queen (the original Hans Christian Anderson story, not Disney's Frozen).**

**The sixth is the magic mirror from Snow White.**

**The last is just a non-canon, random puddle of water Elphaba happens to see as she's dying. **

**(Jeeze, never realized there were so many magic mirrors in literature until now!)**


End file.
